ACIM Chapter 9. II. The Answer to Prayer P 7, 8
ACIM Chapter 9. II. The Answer to Prayer P 7, 8
II. The Answer to Prayer, P 7
7 I love you for the truth in you, as God does. Your deceptions may deceive you, but they cannot deceive me. Knowing what you are, I cannot doubt you. I hear only the Holy Spirit in you, Who speaks to me through you. If you would hear me, hear my brothers in whom God’s Voice speaks. The answer to all prayers lies in them. You will be answered as you hear the answer in everyone. Do not listen to anything else or you will not hear truly.
Sometimes, I do this; I hear only the truth no matter what my brother’s words seem to be saying. When this happens, I feel only love and certainty for him. I also feel the same for me. So, I know what Jesus is talking about here. When this happens to me, it is not because I am using my ego will to make it happen. It happens because in that moment I am open to the truth. The desire comes directly from my heart, not from my mind.
This is hard to explain or put into words because it is not an ego thing, while explanations and words are. But if I were to symbolize it with words, it might work something like this.
My friend says, “I’m so confused right now that I don’t even know what to ask you.”
What I hear is, “I love God so much.”
What I say out loud is, “Let’s talk about it.”
My inner response is, “Me, too!”
I imagine that this is the way my innermost conversations with Jesus go, too.
In this paragraph, he says that my ego mind does not deceive him. He knows the truth in me and doesn’t get confused by my confusion. I am so grateful for that. I want to do this for my brothers all the time, not just sometimes. And I want to hear only the truth when they speak. I know it is possible because I do it sometimes.
We all do it sometimes. When my kids were young, sometimes they would get angry and lash out at me. I would tell my little boy that he couldn’t have something he thought he had to have, and he would yell that he hated me. I would look at that sweet little face all twisted up in frustration and anger and my heart would just melt.
The words were meaningless. I knew that as soon as he got distracted by his next great idea, he would not even remember being angry with me. My child said angry words, but I heard his heart. I heard only the truth. I bet a lot of moms have had the same experience. What if I could apply the same degree of loving clarity to everyone? Well, that is what I desire. I want to hear only the truth, no matter what my brother says.
So, how do I do that?
How do I reach that kind of clarity? The only thing I need to do is allow my own mind to be healed. When my child lashed out in anger, he was only doing what a three-year-old does. He was actually behaving age-appropriately. There was nothing wrong with him. If I had taken his words seriously, I would have been the one with the problem.
Getting upset because a three-year-old expressed his frustration would not be age-appropriate behavior for a 35-year-old. If I reacted to my child’s anger, it would only be because I believed that I was an unworthy mom and that my child was right to hate me. It would be my mind that needed to be healed.
It is always the same. When my boss got frustrated and took his anger out on me, if I became afraid that I could lose my job, then I would likely respond according to my fear. So, the solution would be to notice my response, realize that my mind was confused if I think the Son of God has anything to fear, and ask that my mind be healed.
Without ego thinking blocking the truth I become naturally open and loving.
With the channels cleared of my wrong-minded thinking, I wait for the words that are needed to come into my mind. I hear the call for love, and I answer it with love. I have had both experiences as I have responded to fear with fear, and I have responded to the love behind the fear with love. Experience has shown me that both are possible, and it has taught me what I want.
When I think about this paragraph, here is what comes to me: No matter how a person is behaving or what they are saying, I will look at them and remember who stands before me. This is Christ. If I hear anything other than love, I must be listening to the ego with the ego. That can only be because I forgot what I am. I allow the Holy Spirit to remind me that I stand as Christ before Christ. I open my heart to Love.
My willingness is all the Holy Spirit needs from me. He will do the rest.
8 II. The Answer to Prayer, P 8
8 Believe in your brothers because I believe in you, and you will learn that my belief in you is justified. Believe in me by believing in them, for the sake of what God gave them. They will answer you if you learn to ask only truth of them. Do not ask for blessings without blessing them, for only in this way can you learn how blessed you are. By following this way you are seeking the truth in you. This is not going beyond yourself but toward yourself. Hear only God’s Answer in His Sons, and you are answered.
Very simply, we are one Self appearing as many. This is a strange idea to us because we have chosen to experience separation and to do so with complete immersion. In other words, for the sake of the experience, we have chosen to forget the truth. Luckily, understanding is not needed. However, acceptance is.
The following is from an earlier journal.
For the first time in all the years that I have studied the Course, I can say that I am Christ and that each of you is part of this same Christ Mind without my imagination picturing a whole bunch of us sitting around together in some immense space. I can say it without automatically trying to make it fit a definition in line with the separation idea. I can say that we are one and I can accept it fully as a concept. On the other hand, I am still working on making it my experience.
The way I do that is twofold. First, I spend a lot of time remembering the truth, thinking about it, sitting in it, letting it flow over and through me. Second, I am vigilant to notice when I obviously don’t accept the truth of our oneness. I have been off work since Christmas Eve and am going back today. I will be with my coworkers all day long, interacting and possibly reacting. The day starts as we sit in a meeting and discuss what has been done while I was gone.
Already I am expecting to discover that some things were not done.
Sitting here writing with Spirit about believing in my brothers and asking them for their blessing, and I am preparing myself to doubt them and to attack them. The reality is that the people I am already judging are me. I attack the images I have made of them through projection. Being my own thoughts, it is an attack on myself. Through the attack on this part of myself, I teach myself that I am untrustworthy. In attacking them, I attack myself and Jesus, too, because Jesus and I are in the same mind, as are they.
This doesn’t make sense, and I want to stop doing it.
But I can’t accomplish my goal of blessing rather than attacking by making myself feel guilty that I attack. Nor can I change anything by projecting the blame outside myself. I can’t change anything by trying to change my behavior, pretending to love on the outside while hating on the inside. I can’t change anything by using the ego will to think and act differently.
What I can do is be grateful that my willingness has invited Jesus to show me the thoughts in my mind that need to be healed. He and I look together at the desire to separate through defense and attack, and I talk to Him about it. I tell Him my feelings, how afraid I am that I will never overcome this, and how overwhelming it all seems to me.
As I give Him all these words, He continues to know me for what I am, as God created me. He never doubts me or judges me. He only knows what must be true forever, for it is the Will of God. The only thing He hears from me is the truth. I must seem like a little child to Him, talking nonsense words, lost in my fantasy play. If a little child told you about being a superhero and flying across the sky, if he expressed to you his fear of the villain who was close to catching him, would you get confused and begin to believe his story?
When you looked across at him would you start to see and believe in the persona of his imagination?
Would you try to help him figure out how to get himself out of the imagined problem with the villain? Or would you ease him back into the safety of reality, reminding him of who he is, maybe offering him some cookies and milk, gently bringing him back into himself? It makes me giggle when I think of it this way. “Jesus, do I seem like the little child lost in my fantasy of being separate from my Creator, at war with the aspects of myself that I dream are separate from me?”
The Holy Spirit will gently bring me back to reality as soon as I ask Him to do so. I do this slowly, a step at a time until I am fully convinced I can trust the Holy Spirit. I do it a step at a time because I must. But I do it. I do it through the Holy Spirit. I extricate myself from the separation story simply by giving my permission for it to be done.
It is such a miracle, this.
I can be completely lost in my fear and guilt, ask the Holy Spirit to remove these thoughts from my mind, and on a dime, it all turns around. This is not accomplished by thinking it through or with any form of logic. I don’t let myself be talked out of it. I just desire to be at peace and let go of the thoughts, and they are removed for me. And I go directly from anxiety to peace just like that! Each time I am amazed all over again.
“Today, Holy Spirit, sit with me in the meeting. Show me the Christ that sits across the table from me. Help me to hear only the truth of our being no matter what is said. Help me to know myself through knowing my brother.”
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